desktop backgrounds vs. performance

hazmat

hazmat

Rusher of Din
Is Mac OS the same as Windows in that the bigger the background image size or amount of colors, the more performance you lose? I'm curious, because the ones that come standard on OS X are quite large. I suppose that with the 32 meg video card that came in my 867 it gets more trivial, but I would still like to know. If it is true, are both factors an issue, or is it more image size or amont of colors?

Thanks.
 
I am using GraphiConverter JPG converted images in replacement of the original tiff ones, and the disk size reduction is quite drastic. However, other than gaining (anyway valuable) disk space, I did not notice any improvement in performance (=speed). If there is any, it must be very little
(both on a Titanium G4 550 and a G3 bronze.)
 
I would tend to agree. One thing you might want to try is keeping your monitor at thousands of colors, because that is supposed to give you a little performance gain. But probably not much on your 867 G4. :)
 
Although I haven't read the code, my understanding is that your screen in this OS, no matter what you do to display it, is stored somewhere as a bitmap (read .tiff) at your running screen depth. It doesn't matter if it's a solid color, a repeated image, or a scaled down Nasa photo of your hemisphere weighing in at 2.1GB.

It's also probably NOT stored on the video card. This kind of coolness is not in current video cards. You can blame the game makers for making 2D video card technology stagnate for the past 4 years while OpenGL get all sorts of press.

Don't worry about your desktop picture. Worry about AIM running away with your processor by displaying an ad. Worry about what MTBF means to your HD. Worry about what your wife does while you're gone, but please don't worry about your background. Macs are NOT as dumb as Windows. They seem to be getting closer in some ways, but one bad day does not a retard make.

If you're on an old mac, the 16 bit monitor depth is a decent tip. But even that's not such a big deal under 10.1. Yet another thing you shouldn't have to think about.
 
Theed, thanks for the reply. Can you explain, then, where the desktop background is? At least under Windows/PC's, I think it is stored in the video RAM. So if you run at True Color (32-bit), in a high resolution, with a large background image with a lot of colors, you had better hope you have a lot of video RAM.

As to the other things, very true. No AIM for me. I use Adium. Not married yet, but thanks for adding to the future neurosis. ;-)
 
what's currently displayed will be in video RAM, The desktop itself will simply sit in RAM and get swapped in piecemeal as needed. It'd be nice if they toss it inte the video card if you have the space, but I have some doubts that they've done this, and because the fuzzy shadow isn't done on the video card, having this stuff on the video wouldn't do much for performance. Yet another reason X can be a RAM whore. (Using your RAM and taking your money)

Once again, I haven't read the code. But I know my basics on memory and video cards.
 
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